THROWBACK: 2022 TEAMGYM UNITARDS

The TeamGym European Championships held this year in Luxembourg are already yesterday's news. However, taken the amazingness of the event, we felt it was definitely worthwhile to throw it back to the great memories, and focus on the stunning team attires worn at the competition. We had a chat with Kira, a CHOPAR sales consultant, who helped design the competition unitards for the Danish, Finnish and Luxembourgish national TeamGym teams this year. 

As there are a great deal of details to be taken into consideration regarding the FIG Specified directives when designing leotards for international competitions, we started off with a conversation about the rules.

The rule of thumb is that the attire must be identical for the members of the same team. The specific leotard or unitard may differ slightly in mixed teams, but if worn by womens or mens teams, they must look exactly the same, says Kira. Also, when it comes to the mixed teams, despite slight differences being allowed, one must be able to recognize that the members actually do represent the same team. 
As the rules are open to interpretation, it can at times be a little challenging when designing attires for elite competitions. 

Furthermore, there are no specific rules for the sleeve and leg lengths on the unitards or leotards. As long as the style is the same for the entire team,  you are allowed to choose if you wish to wear a leo with or without long legs or sleeves. The neckline should not be too deep both in the men and female category. Mesh must also not be used on the sleeves, unless there is another fabric underneath. It is a bit funny that one is allowed to wear a unitard without sleeves, but one cannot use simple mesh sleeves, explains Kira.
 
In the international competitions, numbers must also be visible on the attire. The numbers are not allowed to be too small or too large. They must not be loose, either. Because of safety issues, it is generally forbidden to have any loose objects on the attire. For instance, we cannot design a unitard with loose ribbons or external belts as they might hinder the gymnasts’ performances, says Kira.  
 
To explain how the rules are up to interpretation by the individual judges, Kira shares a story from this year's Europeans. This time, the Danish junior girls had decorated their hair with a glittery Danish flag. Unfortunately, they were deducted for this because the judges ruled that this kind of a hair piece was distracting, taking the focus off from the gymnastics. Luckily, the junior girls won gold anyway, Kira smiles.

Typically, the process starts with us having a chat with the coaches and Federations. Here we talk a little about the different wishes and ideas they might have. It can be that they desire a unitard that is of the same color or has some cool multicolor details in it. The most common choice is to go with the country specific colors of the team. 

When all the various ideas have been discussed, it is time for the CHOPAR designers to draft some sketches. It can be anything between two to ten different proposals we draft. As soon as the proposals are done, they are sent to the national teams, who can then select the ones they like the best, with additional changes and comments included.  Finally, the favorite design is chosen and we can carry on to sewing an exact piece of the design, which is then sent to the team to approve.  More specifically, a sewing test piece is one ready-made unitard in a single size.

Here, one or two gymnasts get the chance to try on the unitard so that the coaches can check that all is in order or if  some adjustments must be made. On some occasions, we actually do need to start the process from scratch, Kira laughs. We add the changes, sew a new sewing test, etcetera, until we have an approved version of the design. When the unitard is finally approved, a size set will be sewn so that the entire team can fit it on. This way we ensure that each gymnast gets their exact right size. Finally, the suits are moved to production.

Kira explains that there can be multiple challenges occurring in a process like this, the biggest being time. Always. 

It can be demanding for us if the teams, coaches or Federation representatives do not have the remotest idea on how they would like the unitard to look. It is challenging to start from scratch, because TeamGym unitards have an endless amount of designs one can choose from. If you are asked to make proposals with a little bit of everything, it can both take a long time and be quite demanding, says Kira.

Developing a national team attire is a multifaceted process. Kira explains that the creative process often takes time but simultaneously involves a definitive deadline; the actual competition. The national team members do not train together regularly.  To mitigate the fitting process, for instance, we must be aware of when the national team gymnasts do actually have a scheduled camp so that we can send the size sets to the team at the right time. Otherwise, we might easily miss a whole month in the manufacturing process. 
 
Challenges may also arise in connection with the delivery of the fabrics or required stones used in embellishments. It can happen that  the manufacturer does not have the needed number of stones in stock or that the material does not arrive on time.

Kira laughs and replies, no, unfortunately not really. It simply varies so much from country to country. In this year's EC, there were both carefully detailed and very simple unitards. However, it was clear that the unitards that were on the podium this year were the more simple and classic ones. Therefore,  we will probably see more of that next time, predicts Kira. It is a fact that one often wants to look like the winners.

In terms of fashion, stones on the legs have been something that has been moved away from with time. I remember when I started making TeamGym attires 8-9 years ago, there were many more details on the legs, Kira replies.

You often used both stripes and stones, but the style has moved away from that again, why? The answer could lie in the fact that TeamGym is a very professional sport, and if stone embellishments on the legs have not been utilized for a while, we certainly do not do it either, explains Kira. You want to make sure you stay within the rules, even if there are actually no rules regarding it, concludes Kira.

Since Kira herself took part in the EC in Luxembourg this year and has been involved in designing national team uniforms several times,  we asked her to speak about the trends. A clear trend was the dip dye sublimation, Kira easily identifies. 

However, the chosen designs varied a lot between countries. This year, we saw that Luxembourg's costumes were really detailed, they had chosen a dip dye sublimation and a lot of stones. On the contrary, the Danish unitards were more classic with straight lines and simpler embellishments, which again differed from the very detailed design the team wore last year.  
It would not  surprise me if the Danish outfit for the next EC goes in a more wilder and detailed direction, again, concludes Kira.

Sublimation has now been mentioned a few times, and perhaps not everyone knows exactly what the technique means. Kira explains that sublimation is a method of printing that transfers a design into a material or fabric using ink and heat.

In principle, you could take a picture of a person and print it directly into the fabric. Contrary to a simple print, where the print lies more "on top" of the fabric, sublimation printing uses heat to essentially bring ink and fabric together as one. One can further create beautiful color gradients, where the color changes for instance from dark blue, to light blue and over to white. This is called "fading", or dip dye as we like to call it. The Finnish unitards this year made use of submitted dip dye. What is nice is that sublimation has the advantage of making all unitards look exactly the same.

Often, the different national teams would like to have their flags incorporated into the design one way or another. In fact, the competition attire must have a national logo/brand attached. Most commonly,  teams decide to utilize their flag. This year, the Finnish girls had their flag sublimated on the sleeves, whereas the Danes had Dannebrog stone embellishment on the chest.

Kira says that it can be tough to come up with a theme for the competition attire if there is not one already pre-decided. The Danish junior girls' floor choreography was based on “The Ugly Duckling”, which could have given us a clear  direction for the design. However, as the competition unitards must be identical for all the representing junior teams, it was difficult to get the exact theme incorporated for the gymnasts.  

It varies from team to team. Nowadays it is rare that I talk to the gymnasts about the designs directly. The communication usually goes through the coaches, says Kira and continues, but I often hear the coaches say that I should just have a chat with the gymnasts. In some teams, they might have selected a few gymnasts to be part of the design process and give input. Mostly however, it is the coaches who have the last say.